It gives them exactly the right impression as that's what they were aiming for in the first place. Give people some unlocks here and there and in the end you'll take more money out of people which will never subscribe for whatever reason.

Well I'ma give F2P a try i subbed for a few months a while back and got a 50 but my realm sucked going from semi hardcore raiding in wow to running around doing dailies in SWTOR bah..

maybe its worth playing some alts to 50 on f2p, but not many games do good f2p, some require at least a bit of money to unlock the must haves, a couple of games i think have great fp2, WoT probably has the best f2p (WoWP is coming along nicely as well) and fallen earth has a half decent f2p (but it helps if you sub once so you unlock global chat).

i guess the good thing about it going f2p is that you can waste countless hours doing all the characters to 50 or at least a few of them and then decide on a main then put some cash into it if you plan on staying, at least your not burning cash waiting for some fun to kick in.

It gives them exactly the right impression as that's what they were aiming for in the first place. Give people some unlocks here and there and in the end you'll take more money out of people which will never subscribe for whatever reason.

No it doesn't, it gives the impression that it's ok to charge for basic UI functionality and other need to have components. It's the same shitty mentality that drives people to ask "When can we have payed transfers?" instead of asking the appropriate question "When can we have transfers?", I really have no idea why in gaming the customer is asking to get screwed in the most uncomfortable of places, and no, I don't mean the back of a Volkswagen.

And if you think supporting micro transactions of that nature doesn't head down a dark and dangerous road I'd suggest you listen to the now more famous quote of EA's CEO.

I think there is too much entitlement over the whole F2P thing, after all your getting a pretty vast amount of actual gaming hours for free, regardless of the restrictions, the idea is that if you like what you see, you'll dump money into it to make your life easier, which also keeps the game going ofc if F2P was so lax that you didn't need to spend money they would crash and burn in no time, simply because no one would actually buy anything, its a clever marketing strategy because different ppl are willing to pay for different things, devoted fans will simply sub outright, ppl who play irregularly may buy points to unlock what they want to do for the week, but then lots of folks will simply not spend any money anyway and simply suck up every ounce of free fun they can which is to be expected.

F2P is a cheeky model because it gives you a taster which teases you into micro transactions, few $$ here few $$ there and all of a sudden that F2P game you have been enjoying for a year suddenly has soaked up nearly $100 :P but if you had fun, that's all that matters. it really does come down to, is it worth it to you, if so how much, instead of sitting behind a subscription and not actually getting the full potential out of it.

the day EA get away with charging for bullets in a game, is the day battlefield has finally died. you can get away with charging for permanent things, but not ammo that quote will never come to pass unless your talking about the sort of game designed around ppl that play second life and are happy throwing 1000's into a game but those ppl are few and far between.

to me just being able to log into an mmo and chat with your friends who might be playing is quite a good bonus, if i want to chat to my wow buddies now that i'm unsubbed i have to log into their TS or try catch them on steam or something, the time you save looking for a guild or forming your own one, on the companies dime now. instead of your trying to have fun and build a guild or join one, you are not wasting money sitting around any more like you would be if you were to do these things in wow. this was just a comparison of f2p vs p2p not a troll bait or anything. conversely some ppl enjoy sitting around doing nothing i have myself partaken in the art of 'looking fking awesome'.

the day EA get away with charging for bullets in a game, is the day battlefield has finally died. you can get away with charging for permanent things, but not ammo that quote will never come to pass unless your talking about the sort of game designed around ppl that play second life and are happy throwing 1000's into a game but those ppl are few and far between.

The problem is that they are more common than you think, they basically apply "But it's only $X" to it and accept the fact that they are charged for something that is apart of the basic game. While EA might never charge for ammo, the point was more to show that they would if they could, and the "When can I pay you for X" mentality plays right in to that.

Well i do agree it does work but the quality and quantity need to be in line with demand, for example DLC's are the big thing these days, what used to be expansions are now bite sized upgrades which are usually optional.

but to go as far as to make a game where you literally have to buy the ammo your shooting, I think that particular analogy is cutting it right down too simply.

Well i do agree it does work but the quality and quantity need to be in line with demand, for example DLC's are the big thing these days, what used to be expansions are now bite sized upgrades which are usually optional.

but to go as far as to make a game where you literally have to buy the ammo your shooting, I think that particular analogy is cutting it right down too simply.

Well the quote is about reloading, lets say they offer you 1000 reloads for $X, I'm sure some would accept that as it's so many and "only $X", and it's the very same mentality that accepts being charged for action bars, which was the point originally.

It does suck but if your getting to play the game essentially for free, I mean, a hypothetical shooter that requires you to buy ammo but is otherwise f2p will suffer because the ones who want to play for free and be buffer to the community as a whole will up and leave as soon as they run out of ammo.

where as the Swtor model which i agree is restricting unnecessarily, IS actually playable without buying anything if you can handle the restrictions or only put a small amount into it.

world of tanks is a good example because you can actually buy ammo in there (although i think anyone that buys gold for that game uses it on tanks and premium), but the f2p model is just fine you can get to the end tiers of tanks with time and effort no money required, if they started charging for ammo, it would probably cut the player base in half.

heh after updating swtor and having a look my preferred status is sort of lacking, apparently i have 750 cartel coins but you have to sub to actually get them.. sort of counter-intuitive i didn't want to sub to a game where there are less than 10 ppl in my main hub :P at peak time on a weekend.

Statements like this really make me want to cry, this mentality is what gives the wrong impression to the developers/publishers.

Same here.
Reminds me one time when I was shopping with my son, he said "dad, buy me this gi-joe! its only $5." I told him to give me $5 for it then. He said he didn't have any money. He didn't get his Gi-joe.

Semihage - We weren't the ones that designed a failed MMO, Bioware did. They're the ones that are trying to get new subscriptions, not us. If people didn't want to pay $15 a month for a game, what makes them think they'll pay $10 to unlock some UI bars. How their cash shop is currently is setup is to get CURRENT CUSTOMERS to spend cash. This is a major fail model, they're basically right now trying to recoup losses before shutting down.

to me just being able to log into an mmo and chat with your friends who might be playing is quite a good bonus, if i want to chat to my wow buddies now that i'm unsubbed i have to log into their TS or try catch them on steam or something.

No it doesn't, it gives the impression that it's ok to charge for basic UI functionality and other need to have components. It's the same shitty mentality that drives people to ask "When can we have payed transfers?" instead of asking the appropriate question "When can we have transfers?", I really have no idea why in gaming the customer is asking to get screwed in the most uncomfortable of places, and no, I don't mean the back of a Volkswagen.

And if you think supporting micro transactions of that nature doesn't head down a dark and dangerous road I'd suggest you listen to the now more famous quote of EA's CEO.

Blizzard made D3 into a P2Win game.... we are already very much down that dangerous road. I'm kinda convinced that they will ease the restrictions and allow more actionbars etc. and as I stated numerous times, I don't like this restriction either and I'm a subscriber.

Hmmm i can say that SWTOR was my lifetimes most disappointing game !!! 4 months i gave it and in that time it was still beta.
THIS game proven to me that WOW Was Is and Will be king of all mmos. And there is no point of spending time or money somewhere else. SWTOR was my 6th mmo game tried since i started playing wow. All of them sucked in long run.

It's the same shitty mentality that drives people to ask "When can we have payed transfers?" instead of asking the appropriate question "When can we have transfers?", I really have no idea why in gaming the customer is asking to get screwed in the most uncomfortable of places, and no, I don't mean the back of a Volkswagen.

And if you think supporting micro transactions of that nature doesn't head down a dark and dangerous road I'd suggest you listen to the now more famous quote of EA's CEO.

Charging for server transfers is nothing new. Blizzard has been doing this for a LONG time. I would like to see a free transfers for subscribers, but limit it to once per character every 6 months.